


Laced with Mercury

by jayburding



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Depression, Extremely Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-20 22:54:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11931039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/jayburding
Summary: He doesn’t think about it, and he never tries to say it out loud again. He’s not even sure if he understood what happened, not really, and maybe he has it wrong.An encounter at a party in his youth has far reaching consequences for Viktor.**This fic contains an inferred incident of underage rape. Nothing explicit is shown, but it is referred to throughout.**





	1. Chapter 1

Viktor has a crush on her, that’s what starts it. It’s a sponsor party that Viktor’s really too young for, but he’s tagged along with the seniors because they like him, and Yakov wants him to get some exposure to the sponsors as the new up and coming talent. He looks forward to it, excited to be part of things already when he’s barely joined Juniors.

It’s not just skaters but other athletes, models and idols, more people from more places than Viktor’s ever seen before. The whole thing seems impossibly glamorous, and he’s starry-eyed from the moment he enters. He keeps beside the seniors, smiling and shaking hands with strangers who are worth so much it makes his head spin, and tries to take it all in.

Somehow he ends up beside an idol and her friends and his fellow skaters laugh when he recognises her and is so blown away he forgets to give his own name when she introduces herself. She laughs at him, not unkindly, and invites them all to join her. Drinks are flowing and the seniors sneak sips whenever they think Yakov’s not looking, and even his eagle eye wanders. There are just too many of them to keep track of; they’re supposed to be minding each other.

Viktor tells her he’s too young when she offers her glass to him, it’s not allowed, and she tells him he’s tall for his age, coiling his long hair round her fingers the same way she does her own. He’s still not sure, but the seniors are laughing, and she tells him to try it, just a little as she curls his hand around the stem of the glass, what could it hurt?

It burns down his throat on the first sip and he coughs at the harsh taste, but he’s encouraged by her smile, and her hand still on his. Another drink appears in her hand as she coaxes him to take another sip, another, and follows suit until both their glasses are empty. She presses the next one into his hand and closes his fingers around it like a secret. It takes no coaxing to make him drink that one.

Everything is bright, and the giggles stream up and out like champagne bubbles. He smothers them in his hands and blushes so hard his cheeks burn when he tells her that he’s seen her on television, that he watches the drama that she’s in and loves her character, that he thinks she’s beautiful. She laughs again, a liquid sound, golden and gleaming, nothing like him at all. Her hand is in his, her face so close he can count the points of her eyelashes. Her lips brush against his cheek as she leans in.

“See?” she breathes in his ear, and they both giggle. They’re the only ones now; he didn’t see where everyone else went. “See? Not so young.” 

Later, much later, one of the seniors finds him falling asleep on a couch when the party starts to die down and scolds him for not going when the rest of the younger skaters did. Yakov is not happy, she tells him as she takes his hand to lead him away. He’s struck by a nauseating sense of déjá vu and tries to pull out of her grasp but she won’t let him, which only makes the feeling worse.

“Drinking too?” she scolds as she bundles him into his coat. That’s familiar too, but he doesn’t want to think about it. “You’re too young.”

Viktor’s too young for a lot of things.

He doesn’t think about it afterwards. Doesn’t think about it when he wakes up sore the next day, and Yakov lectures him about foolishness while making him drink water. Doesn’t think of it when he goes back to the rink on Monday and continues training like nothing happened, despite the playful mocking from his rinkmates. Doesn’t think of it when he doesn’t see her again after that. They’re from different worlds, he thinks as he changes any channel he finds her on, decides he doesn’t like dramas anymore, sticks to the foreign channels because it’s something different and he always wants to change things up, surprise people. 

He doesn’t think of it when she announces her retirement and every magazine cover wails about the waste of a talent. Everywhere he looks her face looks back, soft and sickening.

“There goes your chance, Nikiforov,” one of the seniors jokes and the rest of them cackle like crows. Viktor’s crush is well documented, especially after the sponsor party.

“What will I do now?” he cries like it’s programmed into him, falling to his knees and pulling at his hair because drama is distracting and it makes them all laugh again and look away.

Later, left with handfuls of silver after a tantrum that was almost similar, he reminds himself that he doesn’t like dramas.

Viktor doesn’t mean to think of it, but it creeps up on him when he doesn’t expect it. Retirement hasn’t stopped her existing, and the cult of celebrity continues to follow her while she does nothing more than that. Her face will appear in the same gossip columns and magazines that he once looked for her in and forgets to keep avoiding, and every time it sets him back. He’s taller now, filling out as he sets his first record and looks to join the seniors next season, but she still towers over him every time he sees her face.

He tries to talk to his rinkmates about it once, and they still laugh to recall the night their tipsy Junior star met his crush. He tries to explain but they don’t understand the euphemisms he uses to separate himself, and when he tries to put it baldly, it gets worse. Viktor smiles as they congratulate him, impressed and envious in various measures, and then has to excuse himself to be sick.

After that he doesn’t think about it, and he never tries to say it out loud again. He’s not even sure if he understood what happened, not really, and maybe he has it wrong, from the way the others reacted. Some days he still feels wrong, at a fundamental level, like he needs to climb out of his own skin to feel himself again, but he doesn’t know how to face it, so instead he doesn’t think about it.

The ice is where he finds some relief, when he can get so lost in feeling the steps and the sheer physicality of the jumps that there isn’t space for anything else. He lives for it when his will to live any other way slips, and if other things begin to fall by the wayside, at least he doesn’t have to think about them. Here he can be free, if only for a little while.

He’s good, and with Yakov’s tutelage and his new drive he only continues to improve, pushing for the top with a single-minded focus that leaves his peers behind. His first senior season he wins gold at the Grand Prix Final and offers a flower to a skater his age who calls out to him. The other boy looks so much younger than he feels.

(He attends the banquet but slips away as soon as he can. Yakov approves of his disinterest in the parties and after hours activities that go hand in hand with the competitions after his first disastrous outing. Viktor tries not to think about it.)

After Nationals he moves out of the space he shares with his rinkmates and gets his own place. Within three days of being there the space has closed in around him so much that he can’t sleep, so he leaves to try and clear his head. When he returns, his arms ache from carrying a sleeping puppy all the way home.

Makkachin makes the apartment just big enough for the two of them, and she loves him more than anything in the world. One of them has to.

Settled into the senior division, he wins gold at the World Championships the next year after a strong showing at the Grand Prix Final and the Euros. Lambiel praises Viktor’s free skate at the banquet and he’s so elated over it that he actually enjoys himself at an event that usually leaves him feeling shaky and ill.  When he returns home, his gleeful, lanky puppy, almost a dog now, greets him at the door, Makkachin who loves him ecstatically whether he’s got a medal or not. It’s only later he discovers the message on his answering machine waiting to destroy him.

_“Call me when you get back,”_  says the familiar voice, though it’s not as sweet as he remembers.  _“It’s important.”_

Viktor has to listen three times to write the number down because his hands shake so much. He thinks of calling and throwing up with the same twisting nausea in his stomach. There can’t be anything important she needs to say to him, he knows that, unless it’s to apologise. He cannot really say if that’s what drives him to call her, but he knows as soon as she answers that that was never her intention.

_“I see you’ve made something of yourself,”_  she says. He can see the twist of her mouth in the way she speaks, that sour curve that he once mistook for a real smile. He’s been the age she was then and even after everything- he doesn’t think of it, he  _doesn’t_ \- he can’t understand.

“What do you want?” he almost manages to stop his voice from shaking. He feels small again, with that voice coiling around him, and he hates it.

_“He wants to be a skater,”_ she says, every word laced with a sneer. _“It’s expensive.”_

“I don’t understand…”

_“The kid,”_ she snaps, resentful and bitter. _“He wants to be like his father.”_

Viktor’s heart stammers to a halt. His head fills with the uproar of his heart and screaming thoughts colliding that drowns out everything else and he is lost.

He doesn’t know how much time he loses, but she’s still talking to him when the white noise clears as if she hasn’t even noticed his lack of response.

“-but since you won’t I have to chase you. I’ve waited long enough for you to step up. Frankly it’s the least you should do.”

She doesn’t ask, only pressures, and like before Viktor doesn’t know what to do. He listens to his own voice dropping one numb agreement after another until her demands run out, yielding to everything until he’s abandoned to the dial tone. It’s all so painfully familiar.

He stands where he is, listening to the tone rolling on and on for a period of time he can’t quite account for, and then drops the phone on the couch and stumbles to his bedroom. He curls up on top of the blanket, fully clothed, and thinks of nothing but the buzzing in his head. Makkachin joins him, flopping down where she can snuggle up against him, wriggling in demand for scratches he can’t offer. Eventually she quiets, affected by his anxiety, and presses closer still.

Sometime later, his phone buzzes with the details he needs to provide what he promised. He can’t get up to check it.

At some point he falls asleep, or maybe he just dissociates until the light comes bright enough through the open curtains to stir him. All the normal motions of the morning feel monstrously difficult, but he pushes through them, mainly because he has Makkachin, unusually clingy for the moment, who relies on him to look after her. He makes her breakfast, and because she’s eating he eats too. He gets himself washed and dressed because Makkachin needs to go out for her walk, and it almost feels like an accomplishment when he’s ready by the time she comes to him carrying her lead.

He stops at the bank during their walk and sets up payments, handing over his phone with the text message without actually reading it. He’s too wrung out to be afraid of what else might be on there, but no one says anything so he assumes he’s gotten away with it. There’s nothing planned for the rest of his day, now that they’re looking at the end of the season, and he thankfully retreats home. Closing the door behind him feels like a blessing.

Life goes on. Viktor puts one foot in front of the other, and lays out his day like a step sequence so he can memorise how it works, marking the difficult activities like he marks his jumps, for another time, when he has the strength. He knows the money goes out every month by the way his phone remains silent, and avoids thinking about everything that means.

It’s peaceful, but it’s not a solution. Other things slip too when he tries not to remember, a lot of things struggle to stick when he’s sunk himself into a fugue. He forgets appointments, meetings with sponsors, doesn’t reply to messages until Yakov has to chase him down for an answer. The only thing he does remember, every day without fail, is Makkachin and everything that she needs. She’s his gentle but persistent reason to get up every day and he loves her for it.

Viktor’s theme for next season is _discovery_ , because it’s just enough of the truth that he can work with it. He needs to, because next year is Turin and his gold at Worlds cemented his place on the team. The programmes he sinks himself into are bright and melancholy by turns, threaded with his truth enough to give them meaning that he can skate, without pulling so hard that he falls apart at the seams altogether.

It works, and he fights through the Grand Prix series to a solid silver, but he can’t let it go completely because it’s a short jump, barely a single, to think of the boy, the _son_ , who wants to skate too. He can’t do it.

It never stops feeling foreign. He runs those words through his head, tries them on his tongue only once and has to swallow them back like bile as his stomach twists. They aren’t his, these words and meanings. They have no connection to him, he cannot make them into something that is part of him.

He doesn’t really have a choice though. He struggles and falls short at the Euros, just shy of the podium in fourth, and he cannot answer Yakov as to why it is when he’s getting a deserved dressing down back at home. When Yakov presses as to what could possibly be distracting him so much, Viktor breaks like he’s broken before, and he blurts it out.

“Child support?” Yakov says. It was only a matter of time before he found out, but Viktor never meant to let it spill out like this. It feels less like tearing off a plaster than it does like gutting himself, something he would gladly do to reverse what he’s just done.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He’s been saying it for years and it hasn’t helped.

Yakov doesn’t get angry. That’s the worst part. Instead, he looks at Viktor like he doesn’t recognise him, and when he speaks he’s quiet.

“I expected better from you.”

Viktor would quite happily die in this moment than have to live through the long seconds it takes for Yakov to turn away. His words are ash, wet ruins in his mouth.

He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t.

That night he cuts his hair so he won’t rip it out again. That’s what he tells himself anyway. It feels much the same when there’s silver scattered around the bathroom like spilled mercury and there’s nothing left to hide Viktor’s puffy eyes. He looks monstrous, feels it somewhere deep, laced through his bones.

Makkachin whines from the bathroom door, not quite daring to cross the threshold but hovering anxiously just beyond it, pawing at the frame like that will bring him closer to her.

Yakov doesn’t see the next day, because Viktor can’t bring himself to rise from his bed let alone go to practice. Makkachin makes a mess in the kitchen after trying everything to make him move and he’s awful enough to not care. The second day Yakov comes to turf him out whether he wants to or not. He sees the uneven crop of Viktor’s hair, the coils of silver half cleared from the bathroom floor, and he scoffs, but it’s Makkachin that makes him angry.

“This isn’t a drama. Get dressed and see to that poor animal. I expect better than this.”

That last doesn’t hurt any less the second time around.

It feels like a herculean effort, but Viktor manages to dress himself and tidy the immediate mess with Yakov scolding him along. He doesn’t feel any realer by the time they arrive at the rink, Makkachin hurried away by rink staff eager to fuss over her, but there’s a vague comfort in routine even it exhausts him just to be moving. He smiles through the whispers, doesn’t answer a single question about his hair, doesn’t really hear them enough to answer.

Georgi sits beside him while he’s stretching and misdiagnoses his woes with the best of intentions, saying nothing about the way he looks but rolling out every well-meaning platitude he knows, moving on to one of his rehearsed speeches about love when they don’t take. None of it works.

He's meant to be training for the Olympics but Viktor is lost on the ice, dropping steps from his sequence, losing the lead in to his jumps and missing the revolutions he had pinned down only a week ago. It still hurts to fall even when you already feel like you’re falling. He falls a lot before Yakov finally sends him home.

“I won’t have this,” Yakov grumbles as he follows Viktor to the door. There’s a taxi waiting to take him home, Makkachin already bundled into the back waiting for him. He thinks Yakov is worried, but he’s only guessing by the fact that Yakov isn’t yelling. It might just be that Yakov thinks he’s incompetent enough that he can’t be trusted to get himself home.

“Whatever is going on, sort it out.”

“I will,” someone says with his voice, and it convinces no one.

Sobbing it all to Makkachin doesn’t really help either. He tells her how sorry he is and promises to never be that way again, and his precious dog has already forgiven him, whining and pawing at him, licking his face like she can rid him of his tears that easily. Maybe it is that simple for her. If only it was for him.

The worst of it retreats, the immediate cliff edge in front of him recedes, but it doesn’t get better quickly enough. He’s so anonymous at the Olympics that it starts rumours of injury, and after not even placing within the top ten, he flies home from Turin early, unable to bear the festive atmosphere and not wanting to bring down his team who all but swept the field without him.

The flight home is a long one when he has nothing but Yakov’s silence and his own thoughts to occupy him. He wishes it was injury, that his fatigue with the world, his fear, the vague wish for nonexistence that scares him in the middle of the night, could be listed in the same way strains and breaks could be. If the fractures running under his skin could be set the same way as a broken bone, he wouldn’t be so afraid every day.

He apologises to Yakov, who still isn’t shouting, and says he will be better. Viktor never makes Yakov come get him again. He drags himself up every day when he’d rather lie there until the world vanishes or he does, and if he manages nothing else, he always feeds Makkachin, walks Makkachin, brushes her and plays with her and anything else she could possibly need from him. She learns quicker than he expects, and the days she gets him to treat himself the same as her, from feeding to washing to work and downtime, begin to exceed the days she doesn’t.

His beautiful girl. He doesn’t know what he would do without her.

At Worlds he falters in the short programme, unable to orient himself on the ice and stepping out of two jumps he can make in his sleep by now, and as he cuts to a stop in his final position, there is a distinct sense on the void opening up beneath him. Yakov says nothing when the scores are posted, leaving Viktor in 8th leading into the free. He’s been lower, but he’s never felt worse.

This is it, he thinks in the hotel room that night when Yakov has dismissed him, seemingly lost for words, unable to dress Viktor down the way he probably deserves nor find the right thing to say to fix whatever is so badly wrong with him. If he doesn’t fix this for himself, then it really will be over for him.

Everything is still just as hard the next day, the effort needed for the everyday has not faded yet, but Viktor is determined. When he sees the ice, when he steps out, that is it. There is nothing else but the ice. He’d forgotten that simplicity he’d found the first time he was lost, but as the music starts he lets it fill him and thinks of nothing else, gives nothing else room inside him. Only for these few minutes. He can hold it for that long.

His free skate is a melancholy piece that was meant to draw out his performative abilities, the high mark step sequence and two quads that Yakov had developed to challenge him. At the Olympics, he dared to make it lighter, optimism in the face of sorrow, and tried to lift himself onto the podium that way. Now he lays his shattered heart out on the ice for everyone to see.

_Look at me_ , he says and he cuts his step sequence into the ice. _Look_ , he says as he leaps with every inch of spite he can muster. He flays himself open for the world to see, and relishes the morbid metaphor of his ribcage cracking open to reveal his heart, the shattered, rotten centre of him.

_This is me_ , he says, storming through an axel that wasn’t planned to be there. The white noise in his ears could be cheering, or it could be the thunder of his heart turned to applause. He’s made a grand display of his own collapse, letting the surge burst through the cracks that spiderweb through him.

He bleeds poison onto the ice and his audience are captivated. He shakes and still he leaps into the flip like he can break the bonds of gravity by will alone, like the limitations of his body cannot hold the way he breaks loose. When he rises into the final position, not triumphant, or vindicated, only hollow having bled himself dry of all of it, the stadium roars around him. He feels enervated; he feels like he might collapse. He skates to Yakov waiting at the gate and barely registers his coach’s shell-shocked expression as he puts on his guards. Everything is muffled, cotton like, and the softness of it is enticing. He wants to stay here.

He can hardly raise his head when the score is posted, he’s so exhausted. Yakov has to whisper it to him.

Gold, and a shattered record. It fits so well.

Yakov suggests a psychiatrist afterwards. Viktor can hardly blame him, but he never goes. He doesn’t know how to put any of it into words, and he fears that if he tries a professional will hear what he says and think nothing of it, though he fears more that they wouldn’t. Telling one person means telling all of them, and he’s tried that once. He can still hear them laughing at him.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s not always better after that but he finds a way. Money goes out of his account every month and he reads it on the statement without acknowledging what it means. Sometimes he’s fine, or close enough, and he can smile easily. Other days if he smiles his face might crack, and the rest of him will follow suit, all to pieces, sharp edged and ugly. Even on his worst days, he always feeds Makkachin, walks Makkachin, loves Makkachin, and his dear girl will love him right back until he remembers to do it himself.

On the ice he can tell them as much or as little as he wants without revealing himself. He makes an art of cleaving himself open for the audience to see, and they eat it up the same way they consume the rest of him. Sometimes he is ecstatic with it, sometimes just exhausted, but whichever way it falls he never lets enough show that he lets himself down like he did at the Olympics. Just a sliver of himself to be real, with enough glamour to be romantic, and never the same thing twice. When he can no longer find something new to show them, it will all be over.

He makes the quad flip his own from the moment he decides he’s going to learn it. He’s always favoured the triple, and the quad is the next step, the next push to keep improving and remain relevant. It takes him six months of hard work before he can land it with any real consistency and even then it’s not enough to convince Yakov to let him risk it at the Grand Prix series, especially with the Olympics coming up.

Viktor does anyway. At the last minute in the Grand Prix Final, he swaps out the triple lutz and leaps into the flip instead. He soars, and when he lands it, perfect, he still feels like he’s flying.

The record goes again that night. Dizzy with his triumph, Viktor actually makes an effort to attend the banquet and engage for once. He enjoys himself, though it never feels quite safe. He holds the glass of champagne like a prop, and sets it down at the end of the evening, untouched.

Viktor goes to Vancouver in February, flush with success at the Euros as well and ready to redeem himself after his anonymity in Turin. The setting is so different that nothing rings familiar enough to remind him of last time, and he won’t let it. He has his eyes on the top.

He claims the short programme record and brims so full of the applause in the rink that there isn’t room for anything else. Last to go in the free skate, he carries that feeling with him and flies.

It could only be gold.

On the podium he meets Christophe Giacometti again and can put a name to a face. He’s squaring up to be a fine successor to Lambiel, scoring bronze on his first Olympic run, and scarcely recognisable as the blond boy Viktor met half a lifetime ago. Then again, Viktor scarcely resembles himself from back then either.

After the anthem, still draped in his flag, he offers Chris a flower from his bouquet without thinking and Chris looks so offended for a moment that Viktor nearly takes it back, but then his face softens and he laughs.

“I can’t believe you remember that,” Chris says, reaching out to take it.

“I thought I was going to see you at Worlds,” Viktor says with a wink. “Were you waiting for the Olympics?”

“You’re such an asshole.”

Somehow they keep talking after that, once they complete the press conference where the focus is more on Takahashi’s silver, the first Olympic medal for Japan in the figure skating, than either gold or bronze anyway. Viktor is flying too high on his own victory to begrudge someone else, and Chris is content with bronze, for the moment.

Chris ends up getting dragged into the celebrations of Team Russia, who have brought far more vodka into the Olympic village than should probably have been allowed. Flush with his redemption and surrounded by his teammates, Viktor accepts the drink he’s offered, knowing full well they’ll be topping it up as they go. Risky, he thinks, and drinks it anyway.

Chris ends up in his lap at some point, flushed and laughing. He whispers something in Viktor’s ear that is filthy and so utterly ridiculous that Viktor laughs too. Chris is close, so close, as the laughter drifts to a halt, and Viktor is hot with it like he doesn’t ever recall feeling before. Around them, the ongoing party rushes and roars, a crescendo of white noise that cushions them. He wonders if Chris plans to kiss him; he wonders if he would mind.

Nothing happens, and really he’s glad when Chris looks away, tips himself out of Viktor’s lap and steps away. He should be glad he thinks, when Chris takes his hands and pulls him back into the turbulence around them, refills his glass and insists on dancing, but doesn’t touch him with anything like intent.

(Later, much later, he will ask why Chris never did anything when Viktor would have allowed it. Chris tells him “Allowing is not the same as wanting” and makes Viktor repeat it so he can hear himself saying it.)

They swap numbers and social media handles before leaving the Olympic village, and Viktor gets his first picture message while he’s queueing to board his flight home, like Chris isn’t in the same airport seven gates further down. He messages him back, telling him not to be lazy. Arriving in St Petersburg, he turns his phone back on to discover no less than nine more messages of Chris, including a photo taken with a Swiss customs officer. Viktor replies later, with photos of his enthusiastic welcome home from Makkachin.

They fall into being friends almost by accident after that, messaging back and forth in the lead up to Worlds, battered feet and training fails and the co-misery of meal plans. Viktor gets a picture tour of Zurich over the next few months, and in return he shares St Petersburg like he’s never seen his home before, rediscovering some of the things he’s forgotten or missed as his focus drew in tighter and tighter. It should be strange how easy it is, how everything falls into place, but it works, and it’s only months later that Viktor realises he looked forward to receiving messages again.   

At Worlds Viktor is still flying high on his triumph at the Olympics, and manages to retain his gold against fierce competition. Chris misses the podium, unable to compete with the higher point margin of the Olympic silver medallist, bronze this time, or the resurge from Chan, storming straight to silver though not quite powerful enough to dislodge Viktor from the top.

Viktor invites Chris out to dinner afterwards and is grateful when Chris agrees. He stumbles and screws it up when he tries to push past the awkward small talk that they didn’t even start with before, and Chris thoroughly tears him down for being a bad winner before he manages to correct it, which he deserves. He apologises and they salvage an evening out of it, drinking and taking their performances apart, with less and less useful suggestions as the night progresses.

Chris is a sexual person and very free with it, but not careless. He learns quickly that Viktor is patchwork of lines and off-limits areas that he tends to find by trespassing, and he treads carefully but he doesn’t retreat, or run. He flirts like he does with everyone but he doesn’t have to be told when to back off, or when they need to not be touching. In turn, Viktor learns to curb his tongue, what Chris will and will not tolerate from him, and where the tender places are, because they both have them.

He never asks, but Viktor’s pretty sure that Chris knows. He hopes that Chris’s secrets are nothing like his.

Back in St Petersburg, training begins for the new season. Viktor has been messaging back and forth with Chris about the ongoing debate between Georgi and Yakov as to how many seasons in a row one can choose love as a theme, so he thinks nothing of it when his phone buzzes with a new message.

It isn’t from Chris.

_Yakov Feltsman has scouted him. Don’t say anything_. That’s all the warning he gets before she turns his life over again.

Viktor doesn’t think about it. He goes back to practice, sketching out the shape of what will become his short programme, already much sharper than its previous incarnation. He’s running the jumps in his head, the sharp transitions in the step sequence, and already it no longer looks like his planned theme of redemption following his Olympic win and subsequent Worlds victory. It’s more painful, more fearful than that.

_Deliverance_  is what he tells Yakov, who scoffs over his dramatics like he hasn’t done so every year, in that way that’s become a private joke between them. Viktor is meant to say when it isn’t a joke, Yakov trusts him to be honest, but of course he never does. He promised he would fix it and he has, as best he can, with whatever he can shore himself up with. No reaching for the scissors again.

Instead, when they finish for the day, Viktor goes home, locks the door behind him, and drinks a bottle of vodka that has lived on the shelf for years. He’s learned a taste for it, when he’s sure he’s somewhere safe. That’s probably not a good thing. The next day he goes to practice with a hangover as penance.

In the end they don’t meet for weeks. The Senior skaters aren’t expected to skate with the youngsters who aren’t even qualified for Juniors yet, and Yakov has always been strict about letting anyone not practicing hang around to watch. Viktor can’t maintain hyperalert for long, it’s too exhausting, and eventually he stops trying to catch a glimpse of a face that might be familiar, might not (no one’s said anything to him yet, so he can only assume that means the kid isn’t his spitting image). Of course, that’s when they finally bump into each other.

Yuri Plisetsky looks exactly like his mother, and Viktor tears right down the middle in relief and horror over that.  He’s abrasive, driven and demanding, and Viktor could deal with that, he’s hardly the first skater to be that way, if he didn’t push into Viktor’s space like he was entitled to it. Viktor can’t take it, not when Yuri looks so much like her. He steers clear, on the pretence that he scarcely registers Yuri. It isn’t the kindest approach but it works, and it has the secondary benefit of stinging Yuri into actually listening to Yakov occasionally, if only to show Viktor up.

He tries to watch Yuri perform when he can, attending practise early while the Junior skaters are still there, and watching the Junior competition when they occur alongside the Seniors. There’s no escaping how talented Yuri is, but it’s his ambition that will set him apart from what is already a very talented field. Not everyone makes it to the Senior level, or chooses to advance, but in a few short years Viktor knows Yuri will be joining him.

He wonders if Yakov realises that he’s paying Yuri’s fees, if this is where the whole thing falls apart, but Yakov never says anything. Yuri’s grandfather, her father, on the other hand looks at Viktor like he knows the first time they encounter each other at the rink. Viktor walks away and Yuri rails at him later for being so rude. Viktor apologises, but only to Yuri, and makes a point of avoiding any chance at meeting Nikolai Plisetsky again. He gets the hint eventually.

Deliverance proves to be a fruitful theme for that year, buying Viktor’s ticket to the Grand Prix Final with a strong showing at Skate Canada and the NHK Trophy. No one can compete with the melancholy of his short programme at the Final, and the gold is his to lose going into the free skate as the last to skate. The sheer ferocity of his programme comes within inches of his own record. Gold belongs to Viktor once more.

He does much the same at Russian Nationals, with Georgi on his right in silver but nowhere near contesting him, and again at the Euros, this time with Chris at his side. Between then and Worlds his momentum slips, or perhaps he simply grows tired of performing an old fear now that he has met and started to know Yuri Plisetsky. He’s beaten to the gold by Canada’s Chan, and despite Yakov’s lecturing he can’t quite manage to mind.

Yuri wins his first Junior competition the following season, as soon as he’s old enough to compete, building from a strong start in the JGPF but no spot in the final to a gold at Worlds at the end of the season. It’s a meteoric rise, as expected.

Yakov lets Yuri attend the banquet, just for a little while. Viktor anchors himself to Yuri the moment they enter, despite his vociferous protests, and remains within arm’s reach at all times until they leave together. He doesn’t enjoy himself, not exactly, and he gets roundly bitched out by his young teammate throughout the evening, but he sleeps better that night than he otherwise would have.

(That becomes their routine after that, at the competitions they attend together. Yuri bitches about it every time but he never actually turns Viktor away, and Viktor is pacified enough by the concession to his fears that it hardly hurts when Yakov makes an approving comment about Viktor taking responsibility for once.)

In May, the money goes out like it has for the last seven years, and is returned to him two days later. He tries again only for the same thing to happen. In June, in August, and then in September the same thing. He stops after that and tries to feel relieved. 

The closest they ever get is Yuri’s demand that Viktor choreograph his Senior debut for him, now that he is storming through the Junior division just like Viktor once did. Viktor promises to do so, knowing, with or without him, that Yuri’s entry to the Senior division will make history. The boy is too driven for anything else. Viktor is proud of him, in a vague way he tries not to name.

Alcohol gives him the pretext to ask the question he always needed the answer to, at the Worlds banquet that year. Nearly a decade of being legal to drink at these events, but even now he has so many eyes on him that he can’t vanish from view so easily he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s almost safe, but almost isn’t enough. Drinking is the reason he considers his safety in the first place. The champagne flute makes a good prop though.

“Well done today, Yura,” is the hardest thing he’s ever said, and it tumbles out so easily under the cover of being tipsy. “Your mama and papa must be proud.” He can vouch for at least one of them, though he still can’t deal with how uneasy that title makes him.

“They’re not around,” Yuri grumbles, giving Viktor a warning look. “That guy never was.”

“Do you wish he was?” Viktor asks because he can’t leave well enough alone.

“No,” Yuri snaps. “He can stay gone. That woman too. I don’t need anyone except my grandpa.”

Viktor tries to smile and can’t as Yuri storms off. “…that’s probably for the best.”

He follows after him of course because he cannot lose sight of him here, where everyone can see but no one is looking. Yuri cannot disappear.

Yuri is already older than Viktor was when he was born, and there is no question that he is still a child. That thought keeps Viktor up at night.

-

Luck is a strange concept in Viktor’s world. He’s never quite sure if he’s had more than his fair share, or lacked it almost entirely. Most people do not get the opportunities he’s had, let alone the successes, but (he hopes) they have not paid a price for it either.

Luck or not, whatever it is that carries him through runs out as they enter the off season. It’s not even a competition, just a standard practice for a jump that he’s been performing consistently since he was thirteen. Something feels off as he pushes into the air for the triple flip but he cannot name it in the few seconds he has before his blade comes back down. His knee pops. Viktor goes down hard.  
   
He can’t move in the immediate seconds after, stunned as he slides across the ice before he finally comes to a halt. The chill creeps through his practice gear, a line of fire from head to ankle down his left side.

Someone shouts his name, far off and muffled. Viktor levers himself up, arms shaking, like he has a thousand times after a fall, even a bad one. His head throbs where he struck it on the ice. He can’t feel his leg, but he already knows from then tension trembling through him that he will soon. It’s going to hurt a lot.

“Hey! Don’t move!” Someone grabs him by the shoulders and forces him to stop as he tries to sit up further. It takes a moment for Yuri’s fierce face looming over him to register.

“Idiot,” he snaps, his fingers tight on Viktor’s arms. Viktor can’t tell which of them is shaking more. “You’re going to hurt yourself worse!”

“Sorry, Yura,” Viktor mumbles. He’s always sorry when it’s too late.

Yakov comes skidding onto the ice followed by the rink doctor, both grim faced as they drop down beside him. Yuri is made to move over to give them space, but he’s still got one hand tight on Viktor’s shoulder, anchoring him while the doctor asks him questions he can’t quite hear.

There’s time missing somewhere along the way, as the doctor is seamlessly replaced by a blue uniformed paramedic asking the same questions. Hands on his head, the fingers in his hair, are familiar in a way that nauseates him far more than his aching skull. He tries to pull away, and can’t. Familiar.

Someone mutters something about drama, and Yuri yells something unflattering right back before Viktor can so much as flinch.

 Yakov is the one to come with him to the hospital, his continuous grumbling through the whole journey like white noise that succeeds in keeping Viktor mostly present. He can feel his leg now, like he can feel the way his head aches, but they’re both distant compared with the imprint of Yuri’s hand on his shoulder, still burning even now.

The doctor says he’s lucky to have avoided concussion, he’s lucky that it’s only a stress fracture. Yakov says he’s lucky it’s the end of the season and they can get him fit again before the first competition of the next Grand Prix run. Viktor doesn’t feel particularly lucky.

Yakov insists on taking him home, referencing Viktor’s “bad turn” when Viktor tries to argue with him about it. He manages to bargain his way down to regular check ins, twice daily, with Yakov’s stern assurance that if he so much as hints that he’s going that way again he will be staying with Yakov and Lilia until the cast comes off. It’s the thought of being separated from Makkachin for that long that convinces Viktor to work hard.

But it’s not as easy as that. The door closes behind Yakov, and it is Viktor and Makkachin alone inside their space that yawns outwards and then closes in again with every heavy breath Viktor takes. He cannot stand the size of it no matter which it is. Mechanical, he shuffles to his room and gets ready for bed, lies down with Makkachin crawling in beside him, whining as she picks up on his mood. In the dark, his leg throbs with his heartbeat. It’s a long time before he sleeps.

Viktor manages one day, calling like he promised, and remembering to eat when Makkachin does, watching her head out with her walker while trying not to feel too jealous, and failing. He tries to work on his programmes but he cannot hear the music like he needs to; he tries to read but cannot focus on anything he picks up. Eventually he sits and watches TV, drifting off to the dull noise of voices he doesn’t care to focus on.

Another day, much the same, but slower, like wading through treacle, as the hours with nothing to occupy him, or at least nothing that he wants to be occupied by, fray his nerves. Makkachin does her best, even tired from her walk, but there’s only so much she can do when he can’t really play with her beyond throwing a ball down the hallway, though she determinedly brings it back to him for hours on end and refuses to get bored of it. He’s reminded how much he loves her then.

On the third day his doorbell rings, which is strange because Dasha normally lets herself in when she comes back with Makkachin. He’s still not quite used to the crutch, and takes long enough to hobble his way to the door that the bell rings again.

“I’m sorry, I-” Makkachin barrels past him, barking excitedly. The person following behind with her lead is definitely not Dasha.

“Yura?”

“Your dogsitter said I could take her,” Yuri says as he steps past, stomping into Viktor’s apartment like he belongs there, leaving Viktor to hobble round in an awkward circle to follow him. “Guess she recognised the uniform. Don’t know how, looking at the state of you.”

Viktor hadn’t even thought of the bed clothes he’d yet to change out of since putting them on three days ago. He’s very aware of them now.

“What are you doing here?”

“Yakov said you get moody when you’re cooped up and I should distract you or something.” Yuri flops down on Viktor’s couch, and is promptly sat on by Makkachin, who is clearly overjoyed to have company. In the background, the TV continues to prattle on with whatever programme is showing.

“You’re listening to what Yakov says now?” Viktor asks, settling down cautiously where he can see Yuri better. His leg twinges but it does that whether he moves or not. 

“Yeah, well it’s this or be stuck running drills,” Yuri grumbles, making more of a show of fending Makkachin off than actually succeeding. The poodle wriggles in delight and settles heavier on him so he can’t escape, tail wagging furiously.

“Drills are necessary,” Viktor tells him, like he hasn’t done every single thing possible to avoid them over the years. At least on the days when he doesn’t need them to clear his head.

Yuri doesn’t even answer, just waves a hand at him likes he’s already bored.

It’s surreal, utterly surreal, to have Yuri in his space like this, and Viktor isn’t even sure how to feel about it. He’s never so much as imagined him here, in a space that is just his and nothing to do with the rink, or skating. None of the paraphernalia of his performative life exists in this space, and maybe that makes it a little empty, he’s never really thought of it, a little sparse, but it draws the line between his lives so that whoever Viktor is when he isn’t skating can still exist.

Maybe that’s why he finds it so suffocating now, after only three days.

“Unless you don’t want me here?” Yuri says, scowling again, moving to push Makkachin off despite her best impression of a woolly burr. The poodle is proving remarkably stubborn now that she’s comfortable.

“No, no it’s fine,” Viktor says before he manages to dislodge her. “It’s- nice, having company.”

“Alright, alright, don’t start getting soppy, old man,” Yuri grumbles, though it’s hard to take him seriously with Makkachin flopped all over his lap. They’re almost the same size.

It scares Viktor a little, somewhere deep down, that Yuri isn’t at all wary to be here with someone so much older than him. Yuri trusts him far more than he’s ever said out loud, more than Viktor deserves, and he wishes he felt worthy of that.

By the time Yuri leaves later he’s narrated his way through everything they tried to watch and distracting Viktor into eating with him, all while utterly avoiding discussing the elephant in the room. Viktor has to make his second check-in to Yakov shortly after- they probably timed it that way- and it’s the easiest day he’s had so far, not that he tells either of them that. Yakov is smug enough as it is for finding a solution to the problem Viktor presents.

It’s not better after that, not exactly, but he manages to bathe and then change his clothes before going to bed. Hardly a great achievement, but it feels like it at that moment. The greater win would be sleeping through the night, which he doesn’t quite manage. His anxious dreams of a stranger with Yuri’s face are disturbing, but distant. He thinks of his teammate before he thinks of her.

Yuri is at his door again the following afternoon, once practice is over. 

“You’d better have something better planned for today.”

Viktor doesn’t, not yet, but as Makkachin flies past and lays Yuri out flat in the hallway, he’s sure he can think of something.


End file.
